{ } = word or expression can't be understood
{word} = hard to understand, might be this

(Testing 1, 2, 3, 4; 1, 2, 3, 4. Testing. Philosophy 57, October 13th, 1953.)

... don't know how much more important the half is, compared to the whole. So I had half of you assembled downstairs, and we had a wonderful time. At least, I had. And so that's why the other people have to wait.

As to the report of today, I have only -- Mr. {Bain}, would you be good enough to read it?

[tape interruption]

... which has already occurred in America in the James family. I think it isn't easy for you to see what I'm driving at. I'm trying to put your eye on a s- -- turn your eye toward the spot which usually is not seen, a spot at which, from the tree of life, a new generation springs. We look -- if we look into the newspaper -- into the spirit of the times; and therefore the title of the newspaper is the "Times," the New York Times. And then we go onto another time and say, "It is another time." The issue today for the whole of the human race is: is there a community of the times into which every one time has to planted and rooted? As you remember, the upshot of the la- -- whole -- all I have tried to say in the last lecture has been that we discovered the strange rhythm of history, that independence comes before interdependence. And it is contrary to the evolutionary scheme, which thinks that we first keep what we have, and then add. Now, in real human history, we forget what we have, and we turn to it after we have become assured of our own individuality, and our own full life. Every generation is a secret society, gentlemen. Every generation is a secret society, with its own idiom, its own slang, its own habits, and it's quite impenetrable to any other generation. You wouldn't be understood by Em- -- Ralph Waldo Emerson if he entered this room today. Your mores, the way you make love, et cetera -- that's your private, temporary secret, as it -- the habits of his time would look funny to you. And you have to affirm this. Every generation must first live its own life. The thing becomes tragic, gentlemen, if this, your own life, is not only the starting point for the full life. The life of your own time is not the full life to be led. Most of you believe this, however. That would be the purely secular mind, because the secular mind says that the life in your generation is all you have to live. But the mys- -- mystery, of course, of a good conscience, and of a directed life, and of a successful life is to be succeeded into. You can only be loved by a posterity if you have something to be loved for. And what is it, what people are loved for? The sacrifice of their own will. People are loved who have been able to -- to go beyond their own temporary will. The -- Beau Brummell -- you know

who that was, Beau Brummell? Who knows who Beau Brummell was? Would you tell them, please?

(Well, {just very briefly}, he was a -- an actual, historical figure who was known for his good looks and his charming ways {and the} way he dressed, and so on. He became to symbolize -- or came to symbolize, that is, that {elderly} man which always pretends to be what Beau Brummell actually was. { } historical figure.)

How do we call this in America, this type?

({I'm not really certain}.)

Well, we have a play -- we have a play that represents the modern type of Beau Brummell very well. The Man Who Came to Dinner, don't you think? Man about town. That's what it amounts to, only more refined, as in England, it would be more refined. I mean, the dress is more perfect, and everything is more, even -- transparent. When you see the man, it's all in -- within 24 hours, so to speak, his excellency, and his distinction. Now such a man can be remembered as a caricature or as an oddity, but he cannot be succeeded into, or cannot be loved. He can be imitated.

Gentlemen, the question then before the house is: in our days how an independent generation, without loss of character and individuality can enter the interdependence of generations, the interaction of generations, and therefore succeed and be succeeded.

Let me today formulate this in two other ways. I ran into the report or reminiscences of an -- sculptor's wife, a Mrs. French, who has written a very charming book on her reminiscences, and she mentions Robertson James, the brother of William James, and Henry James the novelist, and the son of old Henry James, and she says that in her estimation, Robertson James, who never wrote a book, was by far the most brilliant of all the children of William -- of Henry James, Sr., which I think is very much im- -- of some importance to us, you see, in this connection, you see, of looking at this point where the tree of the James family splits into father and sons. Now we had already said that the unique character of the James family rests on the fact that Mr. James brings into his home the universal church, day and night, that he preaches the Gospel, that he is his own church and minister at home. And therefore, gentlemen, what I'm saying to you is not a solution of a carnal nature in your own family, or in my family, because ordinary men do not bring the whole church universal to their luncheon table, or their dinner or breakfast table. What I'm telling you is: the spirit of one time as connected with the spirit of another time. It is not the flesh of

one family generation, as the flesh in a -- and the flesh in another family generation. The unique character of the James family is in this: that Mr. James, Sr., when he spoke, was absolutely nothing but the mouthpiece, you see, of the pulpit, of the Church, of the sacraments, of the Gospel in his living room. You will admit, that we all, who have work to do outside the house, you see, cannot afford this luxury.

So please do not confuse the question of a purely physical descent in -- from one generation into the next -- from the eternal question: how the spirit in one generation can be transmitted into the, you see, the hearts and ears of another generation. You must, to- -- therefore, so to speak, in the James family see a unique constellation. Solutions in history gentlemen, which then can be followed and -- and redeemed, and respected, and quoted, as I tried to do this solution -- bring into your life as a real solution, have of course a kind of perfection and -- which makes them apt to be examples, but which also in this sense cannot be repeated. Your relation to teachers, to your parents, to ministers, to religion, to history books, to biographies, to people you come to know in life, you see, altogether may be able to match this -- what in this one case was allowed to happen between one father only and all his children, because here was one man who, in the middle of the 19th century, was still in the absolute intimacy of the tradition of the Church, as nobody today really has it, outside the Bible Belt, and on the other hand, he had already the heresy of saying that the Church had to come down to earth in every life, and wasn't dependent on a Sunday service, you see, or on a liturgy, or on any denominational tie-up.

So you see, what I'm trying now to warn you against is not to see why the James family has this special quality. A hundred years ago, every family in the world had still strict religious authority in one way or the other. There was prayer, you went to the services, and neither Jew nor Christian were emancipated. But the -- the -- the -- you had to belong to an organized religion. If you say today "organized religion," it is always second-best. It isn't -- filling everything. Even if you have Catholic tennis grounds, the tennis ground is -- wins out against the label as being a "Catholic" tennis ground or "Catholic" swimming pool. Nobody seriously believes that the water is more Catholic than the secular water in which you can swim. And this whole problem day of the Church is to run after all our secular activities and then to -- to make them into de- -- something denominational just doesn't work. I mean, because everybody feels that we live in a universal society, and a -- a greater universe. And no denomination can cover it totally. It's just impossible.

The -- the Anglicans, for example, have struggled very hard to keep their -- their tradition here as -- Episcopalians in this country. But when you read the constitution of the Episcopal Church -- who is an Episcopalian, anybody? Well, if

you read your constitution, the mainstay is this purely democratic constitution, which is an imitation of the American Constitution, the way they vote, you see, the -- how the bishops and the house of the -- of the lower clergy and the laity, because it's irresistible here that you do everything in the parliamentary way. Whereas in the -- in -- in England, you see, they never have, as you know, gotten rid of the authority of Parliament to rule them. You can't have a Book of Common Prayer changed in England to this day without Parliament, you see, allowing it. And so the Anglican Church to this day in England is very different indeed. Here it has just become a part of the democratic way of life in this country. So the faith in democracy is stronger than the -- in the ways, you see, the historical ways of the Church. Well, you find this in -- everywhere, I mean. You find it in Catholicism, and Protestantism. Don't believe for a minute that the -- the ways of this country haven't had the power to submerge, so to speak, everything that is purely divisive, and purely denominational.

Without going into this, I still say once more: the James family, at a moment which was the last moment in American history, in 1865, when -- and before the country went absolutely secular, as the basis of its education, the basis of its press, the basis of its politics, the basis of its scientific search, there is still this one man, Henry James, Sr. And he sent into the world this group of youngsters. And as I told you, this man Robertson, who never wrote a line, yet is highly representative of his children, they all had a silver tongue. They all were feared and beloved for their incredible eloquence.

What makes a man eloquent is therefore one of the questions we'll have to answer in the -- this story. Nobody can be eloquent by himself. Eloquence is a response. You can only be eloquent if you have -- we are allowed to respond to the stream of speech, of eloquence, of garrulity that is around you. Eloquence is response. Nobody is eloquent who is not in some reciprocity.

Now the family table of the Jameses therefore to this day -- you can, so to speak, realize it in their books, in their letters, in their collected letters -- outshines the eloquence of the pulpit and the sermons of the clergymen in Mr. Henry James, Sr.'s generation. So you have the strange thing, which is an historical -- great historical law, gentlemen, that the most heretical form of an institution can, at the decisive moment, outlast the more orthodox, because it already has, so to speak, made contact with the future -- by {laicalizing}, by translating all the liturgy, the sermons, the chorales, the hymns, the thoughts, the prayer, of the Psalms, of the Church into dinner talk, into breakfast talk, into the witty and cordial exchange, and the affectionate speech between parents and children. Mr. James represents heresy. He is a heretic with regard to official religion. No doubt about it. He wants to be one. He's a heretic. That is, he proclaims a way which in some way does away with the organized church. He denies the Church. That --

we can't go into this in greater detail, but perhaps at the end of the course, we may be able to read some of his texts. He says this in the paper, you remember the -- have you read my paper on this, at this time? Well, I'm quoting his -- his words on Jesus, when he speaks, you see, that it was an unspeakable sullying of Jesus, that the Church got hold of Him, you see, and deified Him, you remember? So he's a heretic -- no -- no -- we shouldn't mince any words and not try to save his soul in any orthodox way. But a heretic may, at a moment when the whole institution dies, bear fruit outside.

When the Roman Senate -- to give you another example -- when the Roman patricians had kept the law under cover for a long time, the {plebesians} rebelled, as they would have riot- -- they did riot, and they seceded to the sacred mountain. And Rome wouldn't have been Rome without making peace between the old patrician tradition and the new {plebesian} tradition. You have heard of the patricians in Rome, and the plebs. These two words, perhaps, may have struck you and that's very important, the way, again -- can an older group can be reconciled to the younger group, and the tradition go on fruitfully, you see, or must the next generation just break away -- the plebs, you see. And they w- -- have nothing to do with the patricians. Now it so happened that Cneius Flavius, a -- a man of rank, had taken pity and sympathy with the plebs before the riots started, and had taken the law out of the sanctuary of the patricians and had written it on publi- -- had published, so to speak, these laws, the texts of which had been kept as the sacred reserve of the peers, so to speak, of the realm. It would be as tho- -- though the House of Lords only knew the common law in England, you see, and the House of Commons had not been allowed to read the text, the old decisions, you see. And he broke this taboo, Cneius Flavius did, and so Roman law was allowed to go on in traditional ways, because his publication of the law, his acting as a heretic in the old order, you see, had come just about in time to make the {plebesians}, after they had read it, to say, "Well it isn't as bad as we feared it would be, but as long as it was kept a secret," you see. "Now we see, that we can very well continue this -- in this line, you see, because these laws make sense."

You will find everywhere, gentlemen, that timely reform, although considered heresy at its own time, can save the peace between one generation and the next. For example, there is one, beautiful monastery in Germany, the {Komburg}, near -- in {Wrtemberg}, one of the most beautiful Romanesque churches you can find there, where 30 years before the Reformation, the canons declared they would break the law of -- of celibacy and allowed each other to mar- -- get married. Now, that happened in 1483, when in 1517 the Reformation started, the people on the {Komburg} were -- remained unmolested by the new Protestants, because they said, "Well, they have gone halfway already voluntarily, and we won't interfere with their possessions. We won't destroy the pictures

and the statues in this monastery, because these canons have already admitted that marriage is a normal state." And so this monastery was allowed to continue 300 more years peacefully. And it's still standing undestroyed, and one of the very few places in Europe where neither the Reformation nor the French revolution have, so to speak, cut off the noses of the statues, which they have, as you know, in France, in the most devastating manner, during French revolution, because in France they had not reformed for even 300 more years. They haven't even to this day. So the mob went out and finding no heretical courage inside the Catholic Church did it wholesale and they broke away. And you have today this curse in France that they only have left and right, and they have not sons and fathers. They have not the two-generation problem, but they have just one world and the other world in constant opposition. That's why the Ameri- -- the French mind is just very logical and very witty, but so absolutely sterile.

Because the heretic -- if you see now what I mean -- in the case of -- Henry James, you see, can now represent to you a form of Church and Christianity, and Scripture and Biblical authority, you see, which you may not grant to the pope, or to the Presbyterians -- Church, or to the Episcopalian Church, you see, or to any organized religion, because you say, "My higher life cannot be dictated to by organized religion." But as an example of the good life, Mr. James has divested himself of any such authority, and he just asks you, "Don't you want that? Can you live without me?" so to speak, you see.

So the heretic at this moment represents the Church as a lovable institution, without authority. And that is the great aspect of this one side of the James family. The older generation, by having become heretical, cannot claim any authority. It can only be accepted by you because you love it, because you have to love it, because it makes itself lovable. Now to be lovable, you see, is not a question of authority, of right, of law, you see, and order, but is a question of your surrendering your heart to it, and not your brain. You see the difference?

So my appeal is then made to you in the same manner as Henry James did to his sons, because why am I entitled to say all these things? Because religion, Christianity, the faith, the Scriptures, prayer, the presence of God did not come to the children of Henry James in the form of any authority. They only came as the outpouring of the free spirit of his father -- their father. And that is -- something magnificent. The father dared -- the father risked his own -- whole existence on the basis of free love. And here the word "free love" is in order. Free love for married people is ridiculous, when it is opposed to -- to marriage, because any real love wants to lead to -- to marriage, or to -- eternal union. And however, to be loved for your relation to your maker -- that can only be done if you forfeit all claims to authority. The father did not claim that his sons had to believe because he believed. He did not claim that he -- he should join any church, because he

had no -- found no fault with Christianity, you see. But he let them completely free, but there was this testimonial, you see, his witnessing.

And so now you see that the -- the family really represents something very special. You read any text that comes out of this family, and you will find that these people were flooded, the children, with this constant flow of the eloquence from their father's mouth in the family. It's a family pulpit. It's a family's gospel, so to speak. The -- the Gospel preached in the family. That's unique. You may get Mrs. Beecher Stowe, or you may get a great minister doing this at home, but he still has his other pulpit. He still does his best for his congregation, you see, or with -- inside the church. Not here. This man had no other outlet. The occasions in which he could give a lecture or a speech outside the family were very few. And then he was a mainstay, where his own friends, you see, members -- assistant members, so to speak, of his family.

And now, also let me underline this. Such a family as the James family, of course, does not consist of the people born into this by right of blood ties. But it contains the friends just as much, and the correspondents. A family, as the James family has happened to be, is of course a spiritual organ, an organ of spiritual life. It is a spiritual institution. It is not an apartment story. It is not a story of two parents and two children squeezed into 45 square feet of room, with a kitchen and a refrigerator, what you call a "family apartment." That's all a total misunderstanding of modern architect. Any family today is -- is needed, because we need house parties. And we need house parties, because the Holy Spirit today cannot be hoped to exist at Cap- -- on Capitol Hill, or in John's -- St. John's Cathedral.

They are too big, gentlemen. If you have no longer commu- -- rural churches, and you have centralized schools -- no district schools -- and everything, if we have 3,000 schools in Dartmouth instead of 400 in normal times down to 1918, for the 170 years, what do you expect? Do you think you can have the Holy Spirit in any of the groupings of such size? It's impossible. You have mob rule.

So the family today is nothing but the normal bearer of the good tidings of the spiritual life. And you have to make it into this. You can't make your wife happy if you have no guests. And you can't have guests if you only regard them with television. There has to be something to be talked about. You have to make peace in your family. You have to give your guests something that strengthens them when they go out again. And you must give them cause to come to you to receive this fortification, in their distress, and in their doubts. And you are -- this television business is just one more attempt of the manufacturers of the spirit of the times to settle once for all that there shall be no Holy Spirit in which the

academics -- crowd, of course, heartily joins, because the academic spirit today in this country is a secular spirit, is the spirit that wants to destroy the communion with our forefathers and says, "They were superstitious. They were just dated. They were antiquated." And so they write books about the last Puritan.

In the -- in the -- I have to stress this, gentlemen, because I -- I didn't when I began talking about these things, because to me it is normal that you and I, when we meet, speak to each other, comfort each other, and therefore are meeting in one spirit, either of despondency or of courage, or what it is, but certainly what brings us together is not just our physical needs. But when I hear you talk, you really think of the family just as satisfying material needs: sex, and hunger, and prestige, and security.

Well, gentlemen, the James family knew nothing, because in this man's decision not to become a minister -- Henry James, Sr., you see -- there was involved this strange vow, probably never articulated, that he certainly wouldn't go back, behind the ministry in an organized church, but he would prove that the real spirit could be inherited better outside the organized church. So I give you Henry James as an example of a superminister of the spirit, who consecrated his home, not because he couldn't become a minister for believing less, but he couldn't become a minister for believing more than you have to believe in an organized ministry, when you only sermonize or say Mass mor- -- in the morning from 8 to 9. And he said, "But I have to witness to this totally, with my whole life." There is no distinction between weekday and Holy Day, and that you may sum up as his main heresy, that Mr. Henry James, Sr., said there is no such division between a sacred place called "the church," and a desecrated place called "the private home." Religion is neither private nor public. It is openly confessed.

And gentlemen, in this point, I want you to see -- we come now to a description in -- of the solution problem in the James situation, in the James creation. You are killed and murdered by your simply dividing private and public life. The best of you, you think, is private. And the -- that which you will stand for is called "public." But gentlemen, God hasn't created a private world and a public world. And he hasn't created private law and public law. That's all nonsense. He has created us openly, in His image. And whether you live in the family, or whether you live in the -- under government orders, or you live in the -- on the planet -- in the desert Sahara, you are -- lie open to Him, absolutely open. And He knows nothing of this division of private and public. And religion, of course, is killed in this country, because it is said to be man's private affair. Then there is no religion. As soon as religion is -- if you know ahead of time that religion is private, it has been abolished. Because if religion is one thing, it is the permeating force, you see, that -- under which public and private life has to be brought. And by saying that religion is private, you have denied that you have

any. Then it is just -- well, it's uninteresting. It is not only belittled, but is in fact abolished. Now Mr. James is so important. He is a heretic. He challenges the whole organized church from pope to moderator of a Baptist meeting, because he says, "Twenty-four hours a day I breathe, I try to breathe in the -- in the atmosphere of the Holy Spirit." It is this pervading force that makes him a unique fellow in your eyes, because you can think of a man who leaves the Church and still believes, but then you always imagine that he treats his { } as private utterances, to be kept private.

Now gentlemen, may I say then that Henry James has not, in 1865, taken the decisive step into the secular era, because he has not allowed his home to be degraded into a private affair. It wasn't his private home. And he has made his children into public agents of the spirit, by transmitting him this task of translating his gospel into the spirit of his -- their own time and this language and the eloquence of secular speech. To write a novel, to write a letter, to write a book, to make -- crack a wit for the children of Henry -- of -- the Henry James father, has always meant to be -- to speak openly, and not privately. That is, to speak with the whole man. And may the chips fall as they may, as we say today, when we are willing to take the consequences, you see, of what we say. When you speak openly, you forget whether this is a private room or a public room, and only such words of you will bear fruit. The power of the spiritual life depends just as the power of creation in -- of children on your willingness to take the consequences. That we mean by "open." It doesn't mean shameless, you see. It doesn't mean exhibitionist, it doesn't mean naked, but it means open so that you do not regulate the truth, and the consequences. You are willing to let it affect others as far as the spirit may move others. That is open, you see. Whereas "private" means I know that nobody will take it out of the walls of this room. And then you have scuttled it, and you are imprisoned -- have imprisoned the spirit into the walls of a -- padded walls of a telephone booth, where you don't want the sound to get beyond the padded walls.

This is the curse of your idea of privacy, gentlemen. It's the same as -- as birth control. The children are born only when the parents are willing to take the consequences. That doesn't mean that anybody is shameless enough to invite other people to look at their making love. They are just as discreet and private as the others. But when the walls are broken and the child is born, they are willing to take the consequences. That's the difference between private marriage and open marriage, you see. If you are openly married, the fruits of your intercourse are legitimate, you see. In your private love affair, there can -- may be -- must be no fruits, because it is only privately -- private as long as nobody knows that you have lived together as {husband and wife}. Can you see this?

Gentlemen, this is something quite far-reaching. I want you to understand

that the institution of the home of the James family in some ways is more important for you to understand that the relation -- than the relations of Church and state today, because you don't know what Church is and what state is, today, because you make the division of open and private. You are so sure that a man can take his own life privately, and are so sure that he can -- that he can control and check his offspring by birth control, that you do not see that the problem we are asked in the full life is: to know ourselves as the link in all life. When it is a link in all life, then anything we do, from shitting, to having sexual inter- -- a lov- -- a loving intercourse with a woman, to thinking, to speaking out, is a part of a process in which we do not sit at the switch, and we -- cannot control the effects. And that's why the Bible says two things: by their fruits, ye shall know them; and judge not, lest ye be judged. Because any one of us knows that many times he -- his utterances and his deeds should not have -- take affect. He's afraid, of course, you see, that he be judged, because once you know that you are living in the open, and there are no secrets, because there is only one life, one territory completely containing us and working through us, then we are all deficient in grade. Many of our acts, you see, we condemn -- would condemn ourselves, so we shall not judge anybody else, because we know that for one successful act, there are 99 unsuccessful and deficient acts in our own life.

Now you have to balance these two utterances. Judge not, lest ye be judged; and the other: that only by their fruits we shall know them. In order to see the problem of a man like Henry James, who is satisfied of handing over the best he is possessed by, to his children and to leave it with them to bear fruit, without saying, "You have to be members of my church," without saying, "You have to share my convictions," you see, without trying to convert them, you see, but only trying to divert them, so to speak. Trying to entertain them. Trying to enter into a conversation with them, and make the -- his side of the conversation so overpowerful that the echo, the response, the answer in some way must come up to this {strength}. It is the vigor of the father's appeal that is the only investment and the only certainty that he has that the echo must be equally important, and appealing, and fruitful. Can you see the difference between a transmission of content and a sowing openly into the ground and saying { } must die, the { } can be reborn. That's the ultimate in faith. Can you see this? It isn't the same word that he wanted to hear from his children repeated, but he wanted to have the vigor of his word, you see, repeated, re- -- reborn.

So, the faith, gentlemen, in the Henry James generation, is of such an ultimate, extreme character, that he doesn't want to have his word of faith come back to him, but a new word of the same degree of faith, isn't it? Now gentlemen, here you have something of a perpetual character, which the Christian Church has never lived before, neither have the Jews, neither have Mohammed and Islam, nor have the Chinese. It's an incredible appeal to the interaction of

generations, that the older man has said, "My inspiration is true, and I will believe in the truth and my inspiration, and I will feel rewarded if my sons -- sons say something quite different, but say it with the same enthusiasm and the same vigor." Will you kindly note this, gentlemen? That is something you have never read about and never heard, and it is still -- far in the future. The problem of Henry James, the heretic, was not to find affirmation of his tenets in the -- by the younger generation, but his -- his task was much more faithful, and much more inspired, and much more daring. He wanted to have the same vigor, the same devotion, the same lack of lackadaisical degeneracy which he represented, and he -- this was his reward and the echo: that he did give birth to Henry and -- and William James, who are the most eloquent English writers of their generation.

That isn't the whole story, but I'm only trying to develop it at this moment from his heretical situation, from his -- not his -- so much his point of view but his -- his point of action, because it wasn't his point of view. He became aware of what he had done only late in life. He made a decision not to become a minister. His negative decision was consciously done, you see, in his youth. Then as a man of independent means, he had the fabulous courage to concentrate on creating this family conversation. And it is, you see, with your damned idea of privacy, very difficult for me to give you the respect for this man's creation as though it was more important than the crea- -- creating {Socony} Vacuum, or the Empire State Building. In my mind, the lifelong action of Mr. Henry James, Sr., is much more important than the founding of any corporation in the United States, be it bathtubs, or soap, or what-not. You can give me Procter and -- Gangster, and who -- not, I mean. It doesn't make -- it doesn't make any difference. All these corporations also had to be founded, and people had to give faith and trust to them and -- for generations. This -- this -- they are producing our soap. All right. But Henry James invested in something quite new, incorporating faith, pure and simple. It's also incorporation, in the spirit of a family, and daring his children to forget every word that he has said -- had said, but not forgetting his spirit. Forgetting every word that he had said. That he had to do, because he was a heretic. You ca- -- no heretic, you see, can ask from anybody else to be orthodox, because if -- since he defied the Church and the Church fathers, here was this father of fleshly children who had defied the fathers of the Church. And therefore, he had to pay the penalty. Now the penalty is, however, much more complicated than you think it is, you see. The penalty was that he couldn't ask for allegiance and adherence to his faith, to his formulated, articulated faith. If I reject St. Augustine, and the pope, and Luther, you see, and everybody else, then of course I would be ridiculous if I said, "From now on, you all have to believe in me, Henry James," you see, because anybody -- can only ask for what he does himself, and therefore, after Christianity -- no heretic can found a church. A heretic cannot found the Church because he has himself desecrated the Church and cried it down and said, "It is -- there is no church for me, well, then there can be no

church for others."

But this isn't a simple solution, gentlemen. The reward of the loving heretic, of the faithful heretic, of the inspired heretic is that he may sow the seed in another man's heart to love as much as he, to be inspired as much as he, and to hope as much as he, and in this sense, you see the strange purification of faith in such a life, you see. Not what I say is what I have the right and the privilege to hand over to the next generation, you see, but the fact that I believe, and that I speak with full conviction, and that I put it in the open, and cast the bread on the water and let it reach, you see, a -- work and be effective as far as I can make it effective, you see, something very different from selling a commodity, you see, in a described -- -- fashion, you see, of a dogmatic statement. Can you see the distinction? It i- -- no? Then please ask the question. It is not right for you to sit there and --

(I can't formulate it, but -- I've been trying { }, I think. I can't formulate the question { }.)

But you do see that it is a problem?

(No. I don't see that there is a problem.)

Well, do you come -- if I may ask this question -- from any background where Church has played a part, or a denomination?

(No.)

It hasn't. Well, still you would understand that a chemist wants to teach you chemistry, you see. And he thinks certain things in chemistry are in accordance with the state of the science at this moment. And he wants you not to believe anything that is dated and antiquated. So wouldn't he be very anxious to make you reach the standards of chemistry, 1953, and would he not be down on you if you -- if you believed something that was thought to be true in 1889? Don't you think that would be true? That he would be very anxious to make you see that we had progressed and that in 1953, in chemistry, you had to think suchand-such things to be true? And you must not relapse into some prejudices which people still had in -- in the 19th century in chemistry? Would you agree to that?

(Yes, but {since have been proven false there}).

Well, I haven't. That's what I have assumed. Sure. But there have -- there have many things been proven false. So -- so you have no trouble understanding

this. You understand this ...

(Yes -- )

...that a chemist wants you to teach chemistry as of 1953. That's all. So you believe in the duty of a man to teach content, a certain content of tenets that must now be thought to be true, so that this chemist can go on and perhaps progress again and so that 30 years from now you may the leading chemist. But in order to become the leading chemist in 30 years, he would have -- first have to learn from this man what he should know at this moment. Is that right? Any trouble in -- in seeing this?

(No.)

Now Henry James' situation is the opposite, the very opposite. He's not a chemist, but he wants to assure his children of the presence of a revelation, of a -- of a spirit that guides their steps in every one moment, and tells them to give up chemistry, for example, or to study chemistry. The decision of becoming a chemist, you see, must also underlie some sanction. That cannot be the chemist's sanction, because you may have to choose becoming -- between becoming a politician and a chemist, or perhaps emigrate and go -- become a Japanese. As long as these higher decisions, you see, are at stake, the chemist can't help you, because he only knows what can be known. When we make decisions in life, if you want to find out whom you have to marry, you see, there is no -- there is no science about this, because you cr- -- re-create the world at this moment. And here we enter this -- this sanctuary of which the letter of Willi- -- Henry James' father tries to speak to his son. He says if you believed in creation, you would know that you must be at that moment in the sequence of how to create. The first chemist could not be told by chemists what chemistry was. But he had to cry out, and say, "There shall be chemistry. And I'll prove it to you." And nobody believed him and they burned him at stake as a -- as a wizard, as a sorcerer. And he said, "Just the same, there will be another chemist. We'll -- we'll look this -- see this through." The first chemists actually were burned, I mean, as witches, because they -- you see, alchemy and -- and witchcraft were -- were contaminating each other, of course, and were thrown together in the 16th century.

Now gentlemen, there is then, where something is not known to exist, a -- quite a different jurisdiction, and that we call the "realm of creation." The realm of nature contains all the things you know already to exist. The realm of creation contains the things which you feel must be proven to exist -- like love, or sacrifice, or patriotism, or -- or beauty -- but which you cannot prove to anybody, except by your own deed. It's absolutely -- you can't look it up in an encyclopedia. You can't look it up in a textbook of chemistry. You don't believe this, of

course, because it is beyond your experience. You -- in any distressing decision of your life, you will however be exposed to justice. You always have to ask yourself, "Shall I take vengeance on an injustice done in the world, or shall I go beyond and create another -- a new standard of { }, which includes even the -- the doer of the evil?" you see. "So that I take him with me into the new order of things." "Love your enemy" is always a creative act, you see. It can never be proven, you see, by chemical rules, that it will work. He may bite your hand and he -- he may stab you in the foot.

We have a -- I have a dear friend on this campus whose brother was killed in the war in the Pacific, because the brother was a very -- a Christian gentleman, really, and -- and pardoned a Japanese, and had him come out of his -- of his hedgerow there, his -- how do you call it, this cave and -- no, what's the word? Trench wel- -- wie?

(Foxhole? A trench?)

Ja. Foxhole, and made him prisoner, and then the man murdered him, this Japanese, for this act of forgiveness. Now when you try to love your enemy, you're always exposed to this danger. Nobody can guarantee that thine enemy knows already that you are going to love him, you see, and before you know it, you may be murdered, as Jesus was betrayed by the people He -- He tried to redeem. That's the secret of the Redemption, that He had to go to the Cross, because He loved His enemies, the people who -- and His enemies were the very people who crucified Him. So He could only show his love by accepting the verdict and going through the ordeal, and -- so that their eyes may be opened after the event. And you are a Christian when you can say to yourself, "I would have crucified Him, too, but I mustn't," because then you are the -- His enemy who would become His friend.

This is very simple, but so simple that you have forgotten it, gentlemen, that to love thine enemy, any act of love is risk -- can always be betrayed. The viper can always wound you mortally in the process. It isn't true that "love thy enemy" is without risk. It isn't true that thy enemy wants to be loved by you. This is all sentimental sugar-bread which you receive in this country. To live thine enemy is the most dangerous sacrifice of your own life. It is not done by good will, but by great courage. And you can't do it always. It's only when the appointed hour has come that the world wouldn't, so to speak, be able to survive if at this moment not one man would love his enemy, you see. It's always a creative act which is added to the nature of things. You cannot ask all Americans to love the Russians. You cannot ask all the Russians to love the Americans. But I'm quite sure that it is very decisive that one American at this moment goes and loves one Russian. It's very important, but you can't promise him any emolu-

ments. You can't promise him a position in the state department after that. It's -- the -- the easiest prediction is that he'll be slandered and defamed in his own country, and that the Russians will throw him into jail and prison and that he'll die from famine or -- or -- or -- or an infectious disease. But that doesn't mean that he hasn't to create the future. Ten thousand have to -- try to create it, and one will be -- may succeed. That's how risky real life is, gentlemen. You hate to hear this, although you see in -- in -- when you deal with chemicals, and you deal with bacteria, and you deal with anything -- plant life, or animal life -- that there is always the seed of a thousand, and one of them grows. So it is as risky to live.

(Sir, can we have a break here?)

Of course. I want one very much. Open the window, too.

[Tape interruption]

...but people only have peace if it has allowed age to come and be reconciled with this spirit and there is a strange utterance of William James in which this secular mind says he will not have rest before he hasn't made the voice of his father heard. He writes to his wife. Has -- somebody found this letter, by accident in his -- in this volume there? It's a very wonderful letter by which William James asserts this very faith, that it is not enough to be William James, but that he's only, you see, in peace with the ages that have gone before, if he has made his father's voice heard, too. So that in addition to age, you see, to be -- being his own -- himself, he has also to give -- make room for this age, towering over his age.

You all know an -- an utterance which still can be repeated with some acceptance in this country. When Lincoln died in the -- in the morning, as you know, after the assassination, the secretary of war said -- Stanton, what did he say?

(Now you belong to the ages.)

To the ages. We belong to the ages when we have become understandable to the next and the previous generation, as well as our own. And as long as we only belive- -- belong to our own age, we just haven't done that. We belong to the ages, and otherwise you only belong to your own age. It's all the difference. That is what is im- -- implied in Mr. Stanton's word, and he was truer than he could know at that time. Lincoln belongs to the ages, you see, and we are very different -- indifferent to the poor digestion, and the -- his marital troubles which he had in his own age.

So we shall call this level, gentlemen, where the ages are connected, a level of universal history. You belong to the ages when you have entered something, you see, that can penetrate the fog of your -- any one's own time. Can you see this? It's stratospheric, so to speak. The fog and the -- the clouds, and the atmosphere of your terrestrial existence is not blinding you to this fact that in the stratosphere, the spirit of Lincoln is still there. Now that was Henry James' father's problem. And I have been asked a very pertinent question in this connection which you now kindly will repeat. Ja.

(Not I.)

(It was me.)

Oh, it was you. Pardon me. I'm sorry. I'm -- get up and speak. Get up and speak. They can't hear you otherwise.

(My point, Sir, is that a -- that a heretic can't exist as a -- a heretic can't exist first of all in a family. There is no such thing as a heretic when it's the part of a father, that a heretic can only break away from a previous authority. The definition of a heretic is one who -- who places, or substitutes an authority of his own, so that -- of a pre-existing authority, whether it be personal or ideological, and that -- in the case -- although I don't know about William James, but in the case of all other heretics that I have ever studied, it's a man who places his new authority in his own beliefs, and his own private beliefs and breaks away from pre-existing authority. And take, for instance, music. You can take any of the -- any of the -- the -- the heretics of music like Mozart, or Beethoven, who superimposed their own ideas on a new generation. Now these things are not accepted, as you said, Sir, emotionally or through the spirit -- or through the heart. They're accepted intellectually, and that a heretic cannot transmit his content or his attitudes intel- -- anything except intellectually. Otherwise he's not a heretic. He's a sentimentalist. And he cannot be a { } theologian.)

Well, it's so wonderful, you have learned all these things. Now, I like you to consider your own situation in real life. And you will find it's much more complicated. Jesus was a heretic, and He was very orthodox. The -- the ideal is, of course, to be authority and heretic, and free, both. There life only begins. You're only moving on this lower level there, you see. Either-or. That's not your real life. And I prove it to you.

I have published an essay, which perhaps I should recommend to your attention: "Youth and Authority." "Youth and Authority" was published by the Harvard University Press in 1940. And I put the simple question -- we have 287 denominations in America. And all these denominations have created at a certain

time by heretics. Or most of them. Just started in this country. And yet they have all asked their children to belong to the same denomination. That's why you have a Society of Friends, and -- you have Quakers to this day, although the children, you see, were left without authority officially. And the Quakers do not claim any authority. But they are -- you have hereditary Quakers, and you have hereditary Baptists, and you have a whole group of people where you know they have been Baptists for 200 years, which is a contradiction in terms. But there life begins only, Sir, you see. It's too simple, your logic. Your logic is in- -- in- -- unassailable, you see. Either-or. Your own authority or not. It isn't true. The heretics have all had a meri- -- a relative -- a relation to authority. They only attack the authority as established, but they try to purify it, and purified it from their own authority, too.

(But that's exactly what I said. I said { }, that's what I mean by "superimposing their own authority.")

Not superimposing, but only using their authority for pulling down wrong authority, but not standing in the way of righteous authority. You only see the destructive thing. "Superimposing their own authority," the -- or they have real heresy. Luther did not say that God hadn't spoken through Moses and the Prophets. He didn't say that Christ wasn't in authority. He only said you had to recognize once more Christ's authority. That isn't superimposing my authority in a positive way, but it is making room for the positive authority which speaks in your heart, my dear man. And that even the pope has to admit that Jean -- Jeanne d'Arc was right against the priests of her time, and that she was an authority, and the priests who burned her was -- were not. And that's good Catholic doctrine. You just -- you don't know the -- even the ABC of Christianity and of faith. It's all here in this country -- it's talked down. What do you think, read, or any orthodox statement about faith, your conscience is still higher, according to Roman Catholic doctrine, than anything the pope says. If your conscience forbids you, you can't do it. It's always super- -- if you call this "superimposed authority" then you don't believe in God. If God cannot speak in every human heart, then the whole story of Christianity and Judaism is just a fake and a hoax -- if it's only a question of one man's authority against another man's authority. It's a question of divine authority and the sources of divine authority in you and me and every other mortal being.

And that is a real question, my dear man, and it cannot be decided by your nice and neat logic. Any mother and any father has to show proof in the education of their children that they are not punishing them wantonly and arbitrarily by superimposed own authority, but because it is necessary that -- that arbitrarily the child must be spanked. It is necessary. Any one would have to act in this place, and then you are right parents. If you make it clear to the -- to your

child, and I hope you will, that he isn't spanked because the father is just a fool, or moody, but because any man who wants to raise children has a responsibility from God to raise children. And he cannot raise children in any spiritual sense if he doesn't punish them. They want to be punished. They wait for it. This ridiculous situation in this country at this moment, where the parents -- don't even know this, because they speak of "superimposed authority." Is it superimposed when a grown-up person has to bring up a little one, with all the means and the might in his power? He has to.

(That's exactly what I'm saying. Henry James was therefore not a heretic to his family.)

Oh, you want to limit the use of the word "heretic." Yes, but this is very important to see that he accept, you see -- we are all heretics.

(No father can be a heretic to his son. A son may be a heretic to his father. But once -- he can -- he can change the authority. He can try and alter an authority. He can try and substitute himself.)

You are not seeing what I'm trying to say. Let me -- perhaps I have to be too much down-to-earth with the James family.

Gentlemen, so long we have tried to find the divine will in a universal history, or in a universal revelation. Down to 1865, there was a church and you could appeal to it and its -- there was the ...

[Tape interruption]

...seems very modest to you, and not interesting and you -- most people in this country prefer Mr. Strike with Union Now, or they prefer some tremendous scheme of a World Court or of a United Nations. But God is very much a concrete creator of direct and special situations. And I assure you, if you look into the problem of the authority of Henry James and William James, you will see that he solved and answered your remark in a very different way, because he didn't treat his children spiritually, as permanent children. He told them that they would be equals in the realm of the spirit in their own generation. He could not superimpose his authority in his family. And he didn't. He said, "I am a heretic and I want you to be heretics, but you must have still the religious conviction that you stand for creation, for the whole, and not for department of science, and not for department of a school, or of -- teaching, or -- education department, or the department of chemistry. You haven't understood that he already anticipated your remark and said, "I'm more radical." What's your name?

({Rafelson}.)

Well, then Mr. {Rafelson}. I'm not satisfied with this eternal drawback that parents, after they have been free thinkers for themselves, then have suddenly to impose -- superimpose their authority on their children. That's too much of a -- of a -- of a contradiction, you see. Here is a man, a Dartmouth student. He has cut all the classes and then he goes to his child and says he has to be on -- on time at the dinner table. So the child says, "I cut the dinner table. You cut classes." And I think the child's utterly right, you see.

So Henry James comes about -- Henry James, Sr. -- and says, "My son, I'm perfectly happy as long as he cuts the dinner table out of your schedule for the same good reason for which I have cut out of the Church. But it must be an equally good reason. It mustn't be indifference, it mustn't be misunderstanding, it mustn't be laziness of heart, but if you have such a overpowering reason as I have to remain a free man, God bless you."

Jesus saw a man working on the Sabbath. That's -- is outside the official Biblical reading. But in the best manuscript in the Gospel, Luke, 5th chapter. You probably don't know the story, because it's not in our official text, although nobody doubts that it is authentic. And he saw -- looked at the man and he said to him, "Man, if you do not know what you are doing, you are cursed. But if you know what you are doing, you are blessed." Now here you have the three levels of behavior. A man who breaks the Sabbath from indifference, laziness, not knowing what he's doing, is cursed, because gentlemen, compared to your childishness, your indifference, your laziness, the law is better. The Sabbath is better than the man who's not on terms with the Sabbath. For example, that's what this story is about. But if you have an outstanding, overpowering reason that you say, "The Sabbath is good, but what I'm doing is better," to -- to come to the rescue of a -- of a poor man, at this moment, you see, and thereby leaving the church, the services alone, then you are blessed.

So gentlemen, the question of the -- of the heresy or authority is only soluble if you admit three levels of performance: the individualistic performance, which is haphazardous, from your own mood; the lawful, traditional performance, which is of long-standing authority; and the creation of a next performance, which does not deny that it is good to keep the law, to come at -- to dinner at -- in due time, you see, to attend classes, but which is allowed to enter the scene because you have fully realized the goodness of coming to my class, the necessity of being on time for the luncheon or the dinner at home, but the experience that something bigger is at stake at this moment in the life of the world for which it is good to sacrifice the schedule of the dinner table, or the schedule of this class. Can you -- can't you see this? This is the human problem, gentlemen.

The human problem is never an either-or. It is the problem of the -- the tremendous law, the law of history, that the good is the enemy of the better. The good is the enemy of the better. It is never a question of good and evil. Who -- who wants to do evil? I haven't found people who want to do evil; they all just dress it up as good. But I have found innumerable so-called "good" people who prevent the creative life of -- of ever breaking in because they are satisfied with the good. The good is the enemy of the better.

Now, the -- the preaching of Henry James, Sr., is -- may be summed up in one sentence: the good is the enemy of the better. The good is the enemy of the better. He says, "I {have}, of course, to act as your father. I have to support you. I have to -- you have to sit at my table. But woe to you if you think what I have to say at this table is the best. It isn't. It is all I now can give, but the hour will strike out in which you will have to decide what is the best." That isn't superimposed authority. That isn't making the heretic into a patriarch in the family. But it is solidly the issue of the ages, gentlemen, how the better can come to pass without denying that good is good. Can you see the difference? It's -- you all will have to grow up certain -- grow out -- outgrow certain things which you think are the ultimate in life. Don't deny them. But say there is something more important and better to be done, you see. Then you will be free. As long as it is a struggle of " this is evil," and you will do good, you will never be able to the very best you can do. The world as created is good, gentlemen, but it isn't good enough.

Therefore, the whole, real battle of history is between good and better. And it is not between evil and good. I mean -- I understand that a man doesn't murder and doesn't kidnap. You have in this -- country, of course, only the constant relapse into full barbarism, I mean, kidnapping this -- this child there, and things. Well, I think that isn't worthy of a debate. Let this man be executed. Let this woman be executed. I won't shed any tear. I have no pity with the Rosenbergs. I do- -- never understood it was a Russian -- a Communist issue, of course, to -- to make the president of this country to make him weaken his position and ask him to show mercy to these people. What is below good, I mean, is of no concern to me. But life, gentlemen, is suffocated if the better is not allowed to come to -- into being, compared to the good. That is the real battle. That's worth your -- your interest.

As long as you think it is -- I mean, it is very easy to agree that murderers must be -- must be put away. And to -- we have forever -- however liberalism, you see, having this wrong idea of only fighting good -- evil, you see, and -- and -- and believing that the good is already there, have -- have shed all the tears about the criminals. So they are pardoned too early, and then they commit their next crime. This country, after all, sees the worst crimes committed by the people who have been pardoned, you see, from a false sense of pity. Why? Because

good people's interest has always been directed into this direction, that it is a most important thing to care for the -- for the criminals.

I mean, we have a funny situation today. The -- for the criminal, it is cared for, but I have a grandchild that has -- is a genius, really, in talent and gift, and she has to sit in a class of 50 at the age of 8 and she's bored stiff. Now that's criminal, you see. They think they have a good school there, but they -- should have a better. And my real interest is only how I can rescue this child from this relatively good school to teach her {as an angel}? But what can she do with -- with 50 children in one class? And that is a scandal. But whether this man there who has kidnapped this -- this little boy is immediately electrocuted or hanged is not -- no interest to me. Behead him, poison him, I don't care. Put him in a bag and drown him, I mean. But all the interest in the United States has gone into the fight between good and evil, because the march of history has been excluded here. The march of history says that good things are good and we know already that evil has to be penalized, but we have still to go one better. And we cannot just put a child under the law of public education, you see, and sanitize it. We have to rescue this child from the good of -- of compulsory education. You -- you understand? That's today the issue.

I know a child in this town that has been ruined by the superstition of his parents that he should -- has -- must go to public school because that's the best they can do for him. And I told them, this child has to live better than these ridiculous schools in which people are made happy. This one probably wants to go. It's a long story, and I -- I'm afraid Mr. Keep has heard this story already twice, have you not? And so this boy, what did he become? I mean, since they didn't allow him expectations and promises, and a great school, he grew backward. He netted -- wetted his bed again, and he began to stammer, and he became two years old, because a living being that is not allowed to go forward will always go backward, and they thought they could just, you see, do no harm by sending him to this allegedly good Hanover High School. But they -- I have never seen a case where the good was the enemy of that which these parents owed their child, the very best. The creative thing, they had to invent the -- a way out. I offered them to send him to England. Anything would have been better but this so-called "good" school. And that's what is important, because here is a good boy. And he was not a -- what do I care for the -- for the non-good boy? But I do care that the good boy gets the very best, and that has to be created for him against the good.

So there are always three levels, gentlemen, three levels. You can have a playboy, who isn't even himself. Here, the {joiner}. {That's on the} lowest possible level. That's the mass man. I mean, that's the fraternity brother, the man who is always everything to everybody and nothing to himself. And he never

reaches even the -- the adulthood of -- of -- of self. He always nods -- what everybody else said, he says, too. Well, I'm not talking of this infantile level. I'm talking of the level of personality, of character, of individualism. And I say this is good, but it isn't good enough. Lincoln wouldn't be interesting if he had just been as ambitious as his secretary of state, Mr. Seward, who then later became judge- -- Chief Justice and was paid off, so to speak, like Earl Warren, for his ambitions of becoming president. That's not important. So neither Mr. Warren nor Mr. Seward belong to the ages. You can be sure that Mr. Warren doesn't. That's a political deal. And that's all right. No harm done, but he doesn't belong to the ages. He cannot. He has only tried to establish himself, and that isn't enough in history. The people are not interesting who are success stories. They are -- it isn't even important. I mean, it's neither here nor there. It's good. But isn't the best. The best is only a man, gentlemen, who can rise about -- above the {talk} of his own time and make people in his own time become aware of the fullness of time, of the fulfillment of destiny of ma- -- the human race through and in his own generation. And I assure you that a father, like Henry James, and I hope myself -- and you, too when you are a father -- has this tremendous tri- { }. He first has -- must pray that he has a normal child, and not an imbecile. Then he must pray that this child goes independent, you see. And then he must pry- -- pray that this child comes back to him, and not to him as a person himself, you see, but to that which he has tried to represent while he was his father. And that -- are three things to be done, not two.

Thank you.